I really wanted to see this movie for three reasons: Jack Black, very nice looking CGI, and good reviews. Now, I know that I generally disagree with the majority of critics, but this is a chance where I got to agree with them for the most part. Two of the other stars alongside Jack Black is Dylan Minette of Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good Very Bad Day and Odeya Rush of The Giver. Both of those films are much better than this one, but they still have the charm they gave off in those movies.

So, I remember when I was in public school, there were several Goosebumps books but I never picked one up. Either I just wasn't into reading, like, at all, or I was too afraid to read them. But they were obviously a huge success, so I guess when you make a Goosebumps movie, you can't have it be about one book in particular. It could happen, but the Goosebumps books are very short and there are enough apparently to fill an entire bookshelf; the manuscript versions, anyway. Goosebu

The main villain of this story is Slappy the Dummy, a nutcracker doll that can teleport in the blink of an eye and haunts R.L. Stine. It's quite an interesting metaphor, actually. I've been in the novelist business and when you have a character that's simply perfect, your Siamese twin or something, the way Slappy stalks and destroys is something you can feel inside yourself. Where, it's always different. I actually kind of wish this movie came out sooner; it probably would've captivated my literate colonization long ago. I was quite surprised the way this movie goes with the sci-fi element of...well, another dimension, I'd say. The special effects around that are quite nice and the action scenes have energy and humour. Plus, there's a time where everyone has to band together at the high school. I enjoyed myself there. I think that as for a few story elements though, the movie could've worked on it. Most of it comes from Odeya Rush's character Hannah? There's a story element involving the brightness of the moon but I didn't get how that gave off any of the info the characters learn on her and there's an end that's sort of heartbreaking and I sort of...SORT OF wish it was left at that, I think it did it right that time. The movie is also sort of cliched, with a death in the family, so it's a good thing there's not a second love relationship with the parents.

Despite those faults though, a spirit the movie has is how unpredictable it is with some moments of humour that really work. I didn't necessarily laugh at loud, but I almost never do at the theatre; junk food makes me a codfish. It was very funny however, when Minette's character Zach Cooper gives a pun about Stephen King, the "other" author who can apparently write fifty-two books a year. The movie's main key point in giving this thumbs up is it will give kids a fantasy of finishing a book very fast; and then when and if they imitate, they'll see the real, actual magic in that. And will it give kids some nightmares? Yes, I suspect it will.